Experiments, tests, trying things out..
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I love the only peanuts crunchy ... didn't know there was such a thing as de-fatted peanut flour. But I'm not about to *** kitten *** off Connie - so I'll just take this one step at a time
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Checking back in four days later - still sticking with the "old reliables" earlier in the day and eating intuitively for dinner & dessert. I tracked today, just to see what a typical day "might" have looked like (depending on if the motto of the day was "life is short, work is ridiculously stressful, eat the cookie!") - and I'm still falling "around" a 500 calorie deficit?!
I've finally started to drop some of the water weight I picked up mid-cycle, and yet have still been slowly heading back toward my latest low weight (at a time I would have been starting to retain water weight, again) - and I did my first real workout in an embarrassing number of days tonight.
This experiment has made me wonder if maybe a longer term "tracking hiatus" would still be successful. I am certainly feeling less "body stress" and "scale stress" - offset by the work stress and restlessness, I'm suspecting - and my workout tonight felt absolutely fantastic.
Very, very interesting things afoot...3 -
Sounds like you are making some good discoverys, Melissa!3
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Not sure if I completely understand “eating intuitively”. Do you estimate calories? Is there tracking or logging? How does it work for you?
I am intrigued by this idea because I’m a pre-planner and am not confident about my ability to generally eat within limits.1 -
So - with the caveat that this may not be precisely the way others approach intuitive eating...
I'm essentially giving my body a trial run at proving that I can be mindful, listen to what it tells me it needs, and also that I've learned some degree of self-control in 9+ months of mostly consistent logging.
Breakfast and lunch look the same 90% of days, assuming I even eat them. Weekends tend to lean toward a one-meal structure, just because I'm typically in the midst of projects or running around. That leaves dinner/dessert/snacks as the "intuitive" part of the puzzle. The only thing I've been doing is trying to be mindful of portions - no tracking otherwise for the last week, outside today's gut-check.
What I'm finding is that apparently I'm still typically eating in a deficit, albeit a smaller one. On any given day, my body may be saying that it needs more fats, protein, fiber, etc. - and I'm letting that guide my evenings. Working under the idea of "nothing is completely off limits, but make sure you're getting some of the important things in first." For example, starting dinner with my usual salad that I've eaten for months - then adding in whatever else in a reasonable portion. If I want dessert or a snack, I eat it - but with the mindfulness of not needing to go overboard.
In the back of my head, there might be a low level of calorie estimation happening - but it's definitely not a conscious process right now. I'm desperately trying to veer away from tracking burnout - one year at a time seems to be about my hard limit. Last time I got fed up with it, I didn't track another calorie for seven years. Knowing that, intuitive maintenance seems to be a skill I need to develop for this all to be successful long-term. 🤣
What I can say after several days is this: I'm not craving anything the way I was when I was tracking consistently. I'm not stressed about the scale or my body's apparent lack of cooperation on any given day. I'm weighing daily, but truly treating it as interesting data and an idea of how I'm doing. I don't feel as "sick of thinking about food" as I was starting to notice - I'm not a meal prep type of planner, but I totally am the kind of person who plans dinner before breakfast is even on the table. 🤣 While I've overdone it a couple of days, the scale effects were not nearly as drastic as when I was trying to control the variables myself (sodium, potassium, carbs, water, etc. to offset a dinner out and get back on track). A meal has become just that, a meal. I don't feel compelled to overdo it again just because I did at one meal.
It's very strange, and possibly a product of where I am in the journey. It's certainly not a thing I've previously seemed to do particularly well, but it's almost like my body is handling it for me this time. I'm not sure how long I'll do this before I go back to trying to keep a larger deficit - maybe after vacation next month?
Not sure if this will help - but always happy to share more as needed. 5 -
@MelissaAY1017 I wish you every success with this approach - I sincerely hope it works for you!
For me, it definitely wouldn't work. I've proved that by bitter experience, and I'll never risk the experiment again. Intuitive eating just doesn't work for me, because intuitively I gradually start ingesting more calories than my body needs, and as the over-ingestion becomes my new 'normal', I ingest more...and more...and more until every day I'm over-feeding myself. I simply can't be trusted to give my body what it demands, because before I know it my portion sizes will have crept up, the snacks will have become larger and more frequent, and the fats and refined carbs will have started their steady, insidious upward creep.
Folks that can manage their weight without logging and food scales and calorie counting have my sincere respect, but I can no more join their ranks and expect to stay slim and healthy than I could sprout wings and fly to the moon. Accurate and comprehensive logging, calorie tracking and weighing/measuring my food and fluids is the only thing that works for me. And luckily - because it does work - I'm unfazed and sanguine about doing it until the day they nail me into my coffin.
So kudos to you - I hope it's an amazing success for you!4 -
@Bella_Figura - thank you! I don't think this will be the approach to get to the finish line, by any stretch. I'm sure I'll have to start tracking again at some point, then repeat at a lower weight, etc.
Despite my intrigue of numbers, and wanting to crack the code for my personal best results - calorie counting and strict logging just is not a sustainable "forever" thing for me. I know it's sacrilege in many ways on this site - fully admitted, and acknowledged that my journey could be longer or tougher. It's not "triggering" exactly, but it does me very few favors to try to force a process that isn't meshing well.
I've got a lot to learn, for sure - and expectations to set with myself. For now, I'm just proud that I'm still intuitively holding to around a lb/week deficit, and that the scale has been heading back to that low weight. We'll see what happens in the next month, and maybe I'll be ready to track for a bit to speed things along by then? Mental balancing acts are so fun... 🤣4 -
My intuition tends to lie to me. I fear if I listen to that inner voice it will tell me that my body needs another slab of cheesecake! Like Bella I admire Melissa’s inner fortitude.
My self control desperately relies on scales, weights and logging. Must confess that even then I’ve been known to lie! ( No no that was only 3 oz not 4-5 🤫).2 -
I, too, admire you, @MelissaAY1017, for that intuitive eating! If I don't put it in the food log, it all goes out the window because I can't say no to good food. At all. I'm enormously weak-willed when it comes to food.
Going to eat out? Oh, all hell breaks loose if I can't find the restaurant's nutritional information before going.
In my case, my body won't give me signals at all. If I'm lucky, the only indication I ever get is "gimme water." My eye power is greater than my brain's and tag teams with my tummy when I see good food. The struggle is real.2 -
Thanks all, but don't admire too much, it's only been a week or so! 🤣
At the very least, this will be a fantastic experiment and plenty of lessons. I sincerely hope it's more successful - it would be an exceptional breakthrough for me. The idea that's been mentioned of "trusting myself" has long been a struggle for me, too. But - I'm committed to putting the time in to try to find what works best for ALL of me.4 -
I realized there was a pivotal point I didn't put into the methodology portion!—SNIP—
Hypothesis: Practicing "maintenance" early in the weight loss journey prepares the mind and body for the actual long-term maintenance through engrained habits.
Methodology:- Based on the article I've shared elsewhere previously, the idea is to practice intermittent fasting with a completely scheduled day, with flexibility in the middle of the day for inconsistent events. (Incorporated on February 01, 2022.)
- Set calorie goal on MFP to be the maintenance value for a desired milestone weight goal after confirming said value does not go under the current weight's BMR.
- Follow a typical day around that maintenance value.
- Once weight drops to the milestone weight goal, readjust the calorie goal on MFP again to the ideal weight goal's maintenance value.
- Once the ideal weight goal is achieved, maintain the same settings and eating habits to see if weight averages around the ideal weight consistently, with a 1-2% error margin for a year.
- First 3 weeks, elevated hunger pains for reasons unknown.
- The following month, hunger pains signify a lack of sufficient protein & fat combinations in the previous meal or the time between meals exceeding 4 hours.
- Micronutrient adjustment after 100 days seems to have no correlation to fullness level.
- The last month, incorporating suggestions from the linked article above, has improved my sleeping pattern and productivity. In addition, healthy eating habits have now been solidified.
- At 250 days, I had not thought much about what I've been doing until I started writing this post.
Quick Background Info: Initially, when I began to focus on losing weight seriously, I used a calculator website I prefer to figure everything out. One of the health calculators it had was to suggest a weekly calorie goal to follow so one could reach their goal weight after a specific amount of weeks. It was still following a healthy, relaxed deficit range. That plan spanned 132+ weeks if I used my actual beginning weight and around 78 weeks if I used an adjusted weight to account for adipose fat tissue's burn rate.
This plan's idea was to deduct ~30 calories every week to slowly change one's eating habits to match the caloric range for the chosen ideal weight.
What ended up happening: It got annoying to change the weekly goal calorie around week 12. However, it did set me up to be more accepting of eating a bit less than what I'm used to. The methodology I thought of due to that calculated plan simplified things for me so much! Just two calorie goal changes are needed! No more thinking is required! All brainpower goes towards "What's for lunch today?" Let's face it, why would we want to spend brainpower on work?! XD 3 -
Individual differences are real 😘
After a good amount of weight loss and fat probably going from memory after weight loss was complete I would think, definitely not in the beginning, I discovered to my great surprise that if I actually listen to my body telling me whether I'm hungry or not, most of the time, not only will it be within maintenance calories, but that actually at times it is more accurate than my very detailed logging.
Yes indeed, I've had both incidences were my logging says I'm high but next day's resting heart rate says I wasn't that high. And the opposite.
But without substantial 🐹 management in which detailed logging and targets and warning levels play pivotal roles my inclination is and remains to go beyond satisfied and into over full
And just like certain overseas felines, past experience indicates that for me the slippery slope is real and multiple days of continuous overfeeding increase the chances of not reversing the trend.
Hence one of the onion / defensive strategies that there is no waiting for tomorrow or next week or whatever to quote unquote get back on the wagon. In fact there exists NO wagon to get on and off.... just continuous everyday management.
And as mentioned, and I suspect is obvious, I have you logging as an enabler of maximum food as opposed to as a penalty that I have to incur
And who in their right mind would not want to maximize 😉🤷🏻♂️😎
Together with my good wishes I would like to remind that between speed and making things easy enough to continue doing them indefinitely my vote is always on the side of making things easy enough to continue doing them indefinitely.
Sustainability of effort and continuing compliance... this was a big part of what Novus often wrote about, and one of the reasons I was checking out this group since it's early days even before joining.
Whatever works and whatever keeps us going in an acceptable trajectory! 😘4 -
Speaking of experiments, I was curious about something last week, so naturally, I just directly subjected myself to it to see what would happen. It's a little related to the first experiment I posted. As a reminder, my week for MFP purposes begins on Friday, so today starts a new week for me. Anyway, let's get right into it:
Topic: What would happen if I were only double digits over my daily calorie average?
Results: I went triple digits over my weekly calorie allotment but only double digits over my daily average. Totally not tripping over because that ended up being an extra meal eaten essentially (yum!). Scale says? **drum rolls, please!** A whopping 0.1lbs./0.04kg increase. WOW. Measurements say my fat got moved around again after being a little stable for months.
Thoughts: I don't know why I expected it to be more dramatic. It would've been funnier, in my opinion. Makes me curious about what causes the fat to get repositioned around the body when nothing has been changed lifestyle-wise except for a slight caloric increase. Either way, I guess it just shows that we didn't gain the excess weight overnight, and we won't be losing it overnight, either.
On second thought, I didn't control for many factors, so this was going to be an inconclusive experiment from the beginning. Well, that was a waste of a week. Oh well, I got an extra meal out of it.
Think I'm trying to head in the wrong direction, so I guess I'll just shelve this experiment for when I'm actually dealing with maintenance. XD3 -
Its always fun to experiment! And it is always good to know that it is that long-term overall balance that will affect things.3
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You know, especially when I was losing faster (correlation between deficit and for ideation anyone?) I was really really keen on trying to develop the perfect (ok a highly edible) non brownie brownie!
We are talking Japanese yam, pumpkin, even cauliflower based!
Not that any got thrown out!!! But for some strange reason I had very few people stealing them from my fridge!🤣😹🤣😹 Though at least one comment of: hey that ain't bad!
How come nobody here develops... no sugar no flour egg white mostly why not some yogurt brownish-likes?????🤷🏻♂️ (No should read: no or very reduced)1 -
Lol...keep your fingers crossed, PAV.
I'm still relying on those Jello no fat puddings when I'm doing sweet with low calories - and no triggers. They work so well. Don't bring about extra cravings. I'm afraid that if I were to find a perfect non brownie brownie, I would eat them all then start on the less than perfect ones. Maybe in time. I'll be more chill overall. But that kind of treat (baked good type) is really dangerous for me still. Ice cream/puddings/chocolate bars are all manageable. Thank goodness!2 -
Ahh.... but there were many times for food for the day consisted of a batch of brownish-brownishlikes😹
In fact I can think of only one time that I actually didn't finish the full batch ever. And multiple times that a sub 2kg batch was food for the day!1 -
ah....then that ups the anti of the challenge! Make such perfectly healthy filling brownishlikes that they will count as all your bunnies and ??? what can we call our proteins??? Piggies???? Beanies???? (and I know I've seen a black bean brownie recipe somewhere...hhhmmm)2
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Top secret: brownishes can contain protein powder 😎😹👍2
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So no brownie recipe here BUT you might try the Fiber One packaged brownies. Got 5g fiber and 70 calories. Good chocolate flavor but obviously not as dense as homemade.
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